


yes i shall come back

by mercuriallyCooperative



Category: Overlord - Maruyama Kugane & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, also last time i was up to date was at the end of s1, and it's been at least a year since i've watched this, no beta we die like memes, so uh it may be outdated, yes this is a rehash of what i understand to be canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25780180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriallyCooperative/pseuds/mercuriallyCooperative
Summary: sometimes, you send messages to people you desperately hope will read them; people whose only presence is a username, an icon, and a status:offline: 573 days.no wonder he could never leave this place.
Kudos: 30





	yes i shall come back

_「Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game」_

_Also known as DMMORPG_

_It's a type of game where you can experience an imaginary world as if you were really in it._

_One such game, "Yggdrasil," which was released in 2126, was explosively popular in Japan due to its expansive map and unusually high level of freedom._

_12 years later..._

_Yggdrasil was coming to an end._

_..._

_"Hey, it's been a long time, hasn't it, Momonga."_

_"Honestly, I didn't think that you would come._   
_Herohero-san, it's been about two years, hasn't it?"  
_

_"Is that how long it's been... That's not good._   
_I've been working so much overtime lately that I have no sense of time."_

_"Isn't that pretty bad?"_   
  
_"Physically? I'm completely worn out."_   
  
_"Whoa..."_   
  
_"Sorry, I didn't call you here just to complain._   
_...well, I have to go soon._   
_I'm just too tired."_   
  
_"Oh..._   
_Take it easy."_   
  
_"I'm really sorry about this._   
_... But I was surprised to see that the Great Tomb of Nazarick is still there._   
_Momonga, as Guild Master,_   
_you must've been maintaining it all this time."_

-"Mass For The Dead", prologue/"Overlord", episode 1

...

You waited years for them to come back.

Sometimes, you think about the NPCs- about Shalltear, Cocytus, Demiurge, Aura, and Mare.

About Albedo.

About how you'd frightened her so badly, speaking of the day you might make your own statue in the Mausoleum.

About how much they relied on you, how much you- or maybe what you represented- meant to them.

How they so treasure the way you had stayed to the end, and not abandoned them, had not consigned them to this new world alone.

Well, how could you?

Oh, you did love the Great Tomb of Nazarick and all the memories you'd made here, all the times you'd had, the characters born from you and your dear friends' keyboards- but. That sentiment may have been the reason you stayed to walk your final footsteps here, as the clock ticked over and the world ended. But it was never the reason you'd kept this place, all these years.

You were always waiting here, in these halls, for the day they might return to you.

You were the best. All of you, the best of the best. Yeah, yeah, they can call you pay-to-win-trash all they want, but you'd staked your real lives on this place, for as long as you could. And there was real skill in the creation of your legend, in the persistence of it, in chasing down all the pieces and numbers and dreams to stitch together into the land where you were gods.

You like to think you were something like family here. Found-family, the sort of friends that they tell stories about, that weather the apocalypse together. (Not that you were able to test that. By the time the world ended, you were the last one left.)

The thing is, you didn't all know each other's real names. Or, your IRL names, anyway. You think a few of you considered your screen names the realer of the two. But even though it was in the requirements of Ainz Ooal Gown to be a functioning member of society, it's not like anyone needed to expose their paystubs and tax records to prove it. One person knew another knew another, and between people who trusted each other, and a long history of getting together to complain offhand about work, it _was_ possible that someone could have been playing a long elaborate ruse of pretending to have a life outside of the game- but it was unlikely.

It meant that people could still be private enough that you had no way to contact them outside of "Yggdrasil", though.

Oh, you knew in vague terms about their job, their company, their spouse and even kids. But their IRL contact information, or even external messaging accounts?

Nothing that someone busy with work couldn't end up just... not replying to for years and years, with no way to track them down.

Nazarick was the only place that every single one of you would know to come.

If they ever decided to come looking for you or one another, long after they'd gone- this would be the first place they'd look.

You were tempted so many times, in the years that you were left alone here, to just... leave. Like everyone else had left. Find another DMMORPG, maybe, with a newer game engine, and a friendly user-base, full of people like you, nostalgic for a thousand different 'good old days'.

But the moment you thought about it seriously, the creeping fear settled on your shoulders. What if they came back, and the Tomb was empty, or worse, destroyed? What if they came looking for you the day after you logged off for the last time, and left a message that you would never read?

What if they all returned one day because they missed you, each other, this old place, as much as you missed them?

Those 'what if's chained you here more surely than any spell ever could.

Every day, you logged on, checked your messages, maintained your little kingdom, and waited to see if they would return.

(They haunted this place so well, even before you built the Mausoleum that pretends to be their grave.)

(You haunted Nazarick too, even before you truly became the living dead; stepping quietly through empty halls where nobody real had ventured for months.)

You left them messages, after they'd gone. Changes to the Tomb, any updates to the game that forced you to make little edits to the settings they'd created before they left, "hey I'll be offline for work for a few days but I'll be back soon! :)", "I know you gifted me your old equipment, but if you come back and find you need it, it's in the vault- I'm making a secret room for it, it'll be cool".

"I miss you guys. We should have made a group chat or exchanged contact info before everyone left. If you ever get this, do you want to talk some time?"

"I hope you're doing well."

~~"I hope you found everything you left Nazarick to search for."~~

(You don't send that one, or dozens like it, but you're always tempted.)

In a way, the news that "Yggdrasil" was ending felt like both a death sentence and a release from a prison ~~of your own making~~.

If you- if you absolutely had to, you could _probably_ track down the chain of people who would lead you to each of your friends, if you weren't worried about intruding on their lives and coming across as a weird stalker with no sense of reality. But barring something like that- when the game shut down, you knew that this was the end of an era. There would be no more Tomb to return to, in case anybody came looking for the people they'd known for something like a decade of their lives. There would be no more familiar hallways, no more secret meeting places known only to the people who'd designed the architecture settings.

With the end of the game, there were guildmates that you would likely never have the chance to meet again.

But there would also be no more Tomb for you to stand guard at; no more duty for a single, lonely gravekeeper.

You could finally, finally begin to move on, and maybe even find another world to love as much as you'd loved this one.

And then the clock ticked over, and you were still here.

And they were still gone.

And the Great Tomb of Nazarick-

_-was real._

(You can't abandon the Tomb or your people now. For they _are_ your people. And they would wait for you for a thousand years, guarding this lonely tomb, if you ever left them to become just a nameless, faceless farmer in a far-flung country in this new world.)

(Well, they'd probably track you down, figure out you're an imposter who was never really the person they thought they looked up to, and then skin you alive if you had any skin left, but that's details.)

(As long as a world remains where you can stand in the Great Tomb of Nazarick, in the place your friends would always know to look, alongside the people that you all had created with every bit of the care and inspiration in your very own hands...)

(... you will always come back to this place, in the end. And you will guard it until the day you finally meet your dear friends once more.)


End file.
